Here's a letter to the editor

[conuly]

claiming that there is nothing sexist with the phrase "manned" tables (spacecraft, vehicles, etc) because in this case "manned" comes from Latin manus, so there.

First of all, that etymology is false. False, false, false. Man (v) comes from man (n) in exactly the path we all imagine. And I know, because unlike this person, I actually bothered to look it up.

Secondly, it doesn't freaking matter. "Manning" a table certainly sounds like it might be sexist, we have an easy substitute in the words "staffing" or "working", and that's good enough reason to switch.

I'm strongly tempted to write my own letter to the editor rebutting this letter to the editor, which of course itself is a rebuttal.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

Yeah, I was a little hesitant, because the argument-from-etymology can be used to punch up or down (alexseanchai above alludes to the plainest example of using it to punch down, the one I was going to reference). Letter-writer feels more on the down side; though at least they don’t seem to be using man as a verb as often as possible in conversations, just to troll people.

[siderea]

(Oh, hey, fyi, I have a pre-existing post in progress that I hope to click the button on today, about how problematic "punching up/down" is as a paradigm. None of which is in response to this comment of yours.)